Tag: lol

LEGOOOOO! And other news

The LEGO-end of Zelda

Yahahaha! The Great Deku Tree, a wise and monotonous figure in The Legend of Zelda series, can be in your home, after significant assembly, for the low-low price of $450. Oh yeah, this is a big one, with 2,500 bricks it stands at about 33cm tall once constructed. Not only that, it’s a 2-in-1 build, with one mimicking the tree’s form in Ocarina of Time, and the other taking after Breath of the Wild. Basically, one has green leaves, the other has pink blossoms.

Included with the build are figures for both versions of Link and Zelda, Hestu, and some Koroks, and there’s even a little sidebuild that your kids can put together while you put the tree together.

Rainbow Six Siege Subscription

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, the online tactical shooter, will be changing to a monthly subscription system, and the news has not made Ubisoft very popular. The change was announced during BLAST Rainbow Six Major in Manchester, with quite a few boos in the audience. You can opt for a cool $10 USD a month, or $80 USD a year, giving you access to exclusive monthly content drops, Legendary items, access to the premium Battle Pass, and a lot more. You’ll also get to skip 10 levels each month.

This is a separate purchase to each season’s battle pass.

Diablo Be Damned

Diablo 4 update released, and version 1.4.1 has had some teething issues. The update was supposed to balance some areas of the game and fix up a few bugs, but instead it disabled Masterworking, an endgame crafting system that was only added recently.

If the fixes worked, then Masterworking was only meant to become cheaper, costing less gold. Oops!

LoL $400

League of Legends has released some special tribute bundles dedicated to the newest additions to Riot’s “Hall of Legends”, Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok. These bundles aren’t new, and often contain skins for the heroes, finishers, cosmetic items, currency, and more.

The three bundles are called the ‘Risen Legend Collection’, the ‘Immortalized Legend Collection’, and the ‘Signature Immortalized Legend Collection’, going for $60, $375, and almost $680 AUD respectively. It does contain a ‘Final Boss Faker’ title, themed signature move, 100 pass levels, and more, although some fans commented that they expected an Ahri statue to be included for that price.

What Can $700 Million Get You?

Not Star Citizen, that’s for sure! Star Citizen, in development by Cloud Imperium Games, is a multiplayer game based around trading and combat simulations. It was originally announced in 2012, when their kickstarter launched and concluded successfully, raising $6 million, with an estimated release date in June 2014. During development, modules of the game have been released to tide over fans, but the extended development time has garnered a lot of criticism.

Through the sale of ships, ranging in price from $20 to a few grand, and crowdfunding, Cloud Imperium Games has managed to raise over $700 million. So maybe a release date is within the foreseeable future. I doubt that though.

News Nibbles!

Destiny 2: The Final Shape is upon us, and fans seem to be pretty hype about it. The newest trailer shows that yes, Cayde-6 is alive (and we’ve known that for a while) but also Zavala appears to be having a continuation of his midlife crisis. In unrelated news: I’m still in love with Ikora.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be coming to Game Pass at launch, so you could get that CoD fix for a fraction of the price.

Days of Play is here! Running until June 12th, it’s Sony’s season of sales, and coming with it will be an assortment of bonus games for Premium members, which includes PSVR2 games like Walkabout Mini Golf and Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, or PS2 games like Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus.

Speaking of game events, we’ve got Summer Game Fest and Devolver Direct on the 8th of June, Wholesome Direct, Women Led Game Showcase, Latin America Game Showcase, and Future Games Show on the 9th of June, Ubisoft Forward, Xbox Games Showcase, and PC Gaming Show on the 10th, and of course, most importantly, the Queensland Games Festival at the Brisbane Powerhouse on the 22nd of June.

 

And now for some upcoming games!

May 30th

  • Horizon Chase 2 – PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, XSX
  • Umbraclaw – PC

June 3rd

  • The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road – PC

June 4th

  • Life by You – PC
  • Destiny 2: The Final Shape – PC, PlayStation 5, XSX
  • Star Wars Hunters – Android, Switch
  • Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game – PC, PlayStation 5, XSX/S

That’s it this week in gaming news!

Unpacking Awards, Azure Attack, and No Opposing Chats

Australian Game Developer Awards Winners Announced!

The winners for the Australian Game Developer Awards have been announced, with Queensland and Victorian developers leading the way.

Local game Unpacking by Witch Beam has taken the Game of the Year Award, with the relaxing puzzle game also taking home the Excellence in Accessibility Award. Art Director and Designer Wren Brier says,

“It’s humbling to be part of a roster of amazing studios with incredible games that have won this award. We’re so pleased that Unpacking also took home the Excellence in Accessibility Award as we’re firm believers that video games can and should be enjoyed by everyone.”

Another local game, Webbed, the adorable game about spiders, received Excellence in Gameplay.

Beethoven & Dinosaur took home Excellence in Art and Excellence in Audio Awards for The Artful Escape. Black Lab Games won the Studio of the Year Award.

Steve Wang from Wargaming Sydney was awarded the Adam Lancman Award for his contribution and advocacy for the local games industry.

Chad Toprak, Kathleen Smart, and Ashley Van Wynngard were jointly awarded the Rising Star Award for the impact they’ve made to the industry in a short amount of time.

The Forgotten City by Modern Storyteller took home Excellence in Narrative, The Oregon Trail by Gameloft Brisbane won Excellence in Mobile Games, Sharmila by Chaos Theory Games and the World Food Programme took home Excellence in Serious Games. Pico Tanks by Panda Arcade was awarded Excellence in Ongoing Games, and Video World by Things for Humans won Excellence in Emerging Games.

Largest DDoS Attack Mitigated

Microsoft reveals that its Azure cloud service mitigated a 2.4 terabytes per second denial of service attack this year, which makes this the largest DDoS attack recorded to date.

The attack was carried out using a botnet of around 70,000 bots primarily located across the Asia-Pacific region. The target of

 the attack has been identified as an Azure customer in Europe. The record-breaking attack came in three short waves over the span of 10 minutes, with the first at 2.4 Tbps.

Thankfully the DDoS attack was mitigated, preventing Azure from going down. Previously the DDoS record was a 2.3 Tbps attack on Amazon in February 2020.

League of Legends Removing Opposing Team Chat

Riot Games has announced that chat between opposing teams in League of Legends will be disabled in an attempt to cut down on toxic behaviour.

“While chat can be the source of fun social interaction between teams as well as some good-hearted banter, right now negative interactions outweigh the positives. We’ll evaluate the impact of this change through verbal abuse reports and penalty rates, as well as surveys and direct feedback from you all.”

And now for some upcoming game releases!

October 14

  • A Little Golf Journey [PC, Switch]
  • Bonito Days [Switch]
  • Despot’s Game [PC]
  • Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality [PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch]
  • Dungeon Encounters [PC, PS4, Switch]
  • Godstrike [PS4, XBO]
  • Jackbox Party Pack 8 [PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch]
  • Ruin Raiders [PC, Switch]
  • Sphere – Flying Cities [PC]

October 15

  • Ancient Stories: Gods of Egypt [PS4, XBO, Switch]
  • Crysis Remastered Trilogy [PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO]
  • Demon Slayer: The Hikonami Chronicles [PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO]
  • The Good Life [PC, PS4, XBO, Switch]
  • Greylancer [PS4, XBO, Switch]
  • Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town [PS4, XBO]

October 18

  • Nuclear Blaze [PC]

October 19

  • Dying Light: Platinum Edition [Switch
  • Into The Pit [PC, XBO]
  • War Mongrels [PC]
  • Youtubers Life 2 [PC, PS4, XBO, Switch]

October 20

  • Healing Spree [PC]
  • Jars [PC, Switch]